Hard Twist 9

Call for submissions for Hard Twist 10 – Memory is now open. Click HERE for details.

Hard Twist 9 – Fibre Optics

This exhibition of textiles in the Digital Age plugs into the juncture where textile connects with computer technology and exposes how the digital touches cloth – as obliquely as in a digital image of a hand-dyed, hand-woven piece or as directly as a hand-knit QR code connecting us to video of the sheep whose wool is integral to the piece.

For this ninth edition of the Gladstone’s hallmark textile art show, artists were asked to submit work that is formed by, illustrates, uses or otherwise relates to the combination of textiles and digital technology. Or vice-versa! The result has been a stunning array of works that push the boundaries of this medium and invite the viewer to delight in new modes of making.

Hard Twist 8: This is Personal showcases works exploring the nuances, complexities and politics of that which is individual, private and intimate.

Cloth is personal. Cloth speaks of the person cocooned in successive layers of textile that communicate who they are, that tell of their dreams and aspirations. And occasionally betray their secrets.

Radiating out from underwear – intensely personal, usually hidden, and sometimes surprising – through the various layers that signal origins, social position, hopes, fears, sexuality and aspirations, Hard Twist 8 – This Is Personalencompasses the gamut of the human with signals wrapped in cloth.

The opening weekend of Hard Twist 8 – This is Personal will coincide with the Gladstone Hotel’s 11th annual alternative design event, Come Up To My Room!

Hard Twist, an annual juried show of work that celebrates the intimate, layered and complex relationship between people and textile, has become an important annual event within the Canadian fibre art community and a signature event for the Gladstone since 2006.

Participants range from established artists with impressive track records to students in the process of refining their focus. The works are tiny and huge, straightforward and complex, representational and abstract, and speak of things as disparate as biblical lyrics, global warming and the fate of dryer lint.

Each year, co-curators Helena Frei and Chris Mitchell weave this wild diversity into a rich and complex tapestry inhabited by a powerful sense of human creativity.

This year’s Hard Twist offers the opportunity to get in touch with your inner textile aficionado – to knit your brows over the lint portraits, attempt to unravel the meaning of the stockinette-stitch QR codes, get tied up with a game of cat’s cradle or wound up over whether the embroidery that’s giving you the finger is a political statement or a personal insult. But whatever you do, however you feel, you must try the bee beard!

Hard Twist, an annual juried show of work thatcelebrates the intimate, layered and complex relationship between people and textile, has become an important annual event within the Canadian fibre art community and a signature event for the Gladstone since 2006.

Participants range from established artists with impressive track records to students in the process of refining their focus. The works are tiny and huge, straightforward and complex, representational and abstract, and speak of things as disparate as biblical lyrics, global warming and the fate of dryer lint.

Each year, co-curators Helena Frei and Chris Mitchell weave this wild diversity into a rich and complex tapestry inhabited by a powerful sense of human creativity.